kiss me perilous

 
bullet for my valentine. death cab for cutie. I wanted those  
monikers, make noir poetry out of ‘em, but they were
taken. too bad.
 
‘a man’s face is his autobiography, a woman’s face is her  
fiction.’ Oscar Wilde told me that one night when two bottles
of Crow dropped me right into his lap. when it comes to  
dames & drinking, I hold the patent on system of a down.
 
it was late. I was the last joker in the bar. I went to the cigarette
machine & heard angry voices just behind the office door,  
sounded like a doll & a big mean guy. he was about to hit her
maybe, so I busted in.
 
the doll had the upper hand, it was full of a sinister black gun.
she got three shots off before I could move. the big guy looked  
up, past the ceiling where heaven was, then he dropped hard.
 
when I grabbed the gun, the girl turned & I saw Colette’s face.
she was a hooker that I’d done business with. she always made  
it seem real, so I rushed her out the back door to my car.
 
she didn’t speak till we got to my place. ‘you want to hear my
story?’ she asked. I took a drag off my Camel & regarded her
thru the smoke. ‘you ain’t Dashiell Hammett, baby, you don’t  
have a story. I saw you do it.’
 
she stared at me with the eyes of a desert that refused to cry.
‘you’re a man. you’ve never been raped.’
 
that was as cliché as Bogart in black&white on a rainy night.  
she was a whore & her gateway to paradise was wide open. I  
figured it wasn’t possible for a whore to be raped.
 
she was a cold blooded killer & she was beautiful, her neck would  
look good in pearls or a lace collar, but not a noose.
 
‘help me out, Johnny,’ she said. ‘I can give you what you’ve been  
searching for all your life. you can call it love if you want to.’ she
kissed me then, serious, the way a woman does when it means  
she’ll never kiss someone else. I kissed her back. I told my heart  
to go to hell, & I kissed her.
 
I gave her the keys to my Stude, money for a train ticket too.
kiss me perilous, baby, there is someone else to be lonely with…
 
 
(Artist unknown)